Jaguars and kittens

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Hi all,

We have almost made 6 months in Peru, and so are down in town on the way to Brazil to get another passport stamp. We are making a bit of a holiday out of it and have 4 whole days off accompanied by books and newspapers sent by our parents.

We are fully enjoying the onset of dry season, which has brought with it two new RNs, George and Shelley. This has greatly changed the dynamic of the place and we are getting a lot more things done with them and being very productive. We have been making a big effort to replace all the plants in the medicinal garden and to get the trails clear and in better condition for the high season. The good weather has also meant more animals, and I (Yaz) have recently run into a couple of big herds of white lipped peccaries, and both of us have spotted their smaller cousins the collared peccaries up by the lake. Jack also spotted the very rare neotropical river otters, which are smaller than the giant otters and live in streams.

Today we were very lucky to see a jaguar on the way down from the lodge, we had only been going in the boat for about 5 minutes, and there it was resting on the river bank and minding its own bussiness. We were so excited that we only managed to take blurred photos, but we are very proud of them anyway. We are excetionally happy as we have been searching frequently for any kind of cat, and have often encountered their prints and also caught the bum of a puma on a camer trap. We even though we saw a jaguarundi (a small black cat) but it turned out to be a short eared dog which is rarer, but not much cooler.

So far cats have eluded us but we were especially lucky today, because we should have been on an earlier boat, but delayed our journey by an hour so that we could rescue a kitten from the farm across the river, where it had been abandoned. It was a very sweet kitten and we did really well to hang on to it until the office in puerto, where we promptly lost it. Finally found it under a bed an hour later and one of the girls at the office has adopted it. A very good trip down river all round as we saw a big herd of capybaras and a big black caiman.

More updates soon and hope you are all well
love
Yaz and Jack xxx

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Photos

Yaz feeding tamarins
a family that come and steal the bananas from the banana store at the lodge

Obelisk in Puerto
Puertos greatest landmark